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Cheapass Games has a game called Unexploded Cow. I’ve always found the “story” behind it amusing.

You and your friends have discovered two problems with a common solution: Mad Cows in England and Unexploded Bombs in France.

You’ve decided to bring these two powderkegs together just to see what happens. And you wouldn’t say “no” to a little money on the side.

Many fantasy RPGs fall victim to two common plot holes (well, at least, two that I’ll talk about today…).

The first plot hole is that of resurrection magic, or at least, the logical consequences that arise when you consider the ramifications of its existence. In particular, what does it matter if the PCs kill the Big Bad, when his minions could resurrect him? In theory the PCs could come up with certain countermeasures to make that difficult, but in practice it seems like something that is typically hand-waved away.

The second plot hole is one common to much of genre fiction, and not specific to RPGs. An ancient evil, locked away in a prison for millenia, is unleashed, and the PCs are tasked with destroying it. That, then, raises the question of why the ancient evil wasn’t destroyed in the first place, rather than being locked away.

It’s probably obvious where I’m going with this, but much like those English mad cows and French landmines, it occurs to me that these are two problems which could be nicely solved by smashing them together. The real final solution for people you want out of the picture as close to permanently as possible is to lock them up in some sort of magical prison, and the reason things are locked up is because if they were destroyed they could be resurrected.